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Call me Murphy. Whatever could have gone wrong with this trip, did go wrong.

My departing flight from Canada was delayed more than 24 hours, so I only arrived at our staging base "somewhere in the Middle East" at 2 a.m. on Nov. 12, after a thoroughly miserable flight with an interminable layover in Frankfurt. Given the hour, there was only a skeleton staff waiting to greet me and the other arriving soldiers.

This was most unfortunate because, in a typical snafu caused by my delayed arrival, no one (who was awake) had any idea I was arriving. No one gets onto the base without proper documentation. The guards inspected me, my luggage and my travel documents quite thoroughly before I was allowed in (not a lot of fun when everyone else is already in bed).

The comedy of errors continued the next day. The people who had greeted me at the base at 2 a.m. told me to report to the main office of the base at 8 a.m. to figure out what was happening.

When I showed up at the appointed hour, the clerk said: "We missed you this morning."

Apparently, I had been scheduled to fly out to Kandahar that morning at 5 a.m. This earned me a "Where are you?" e-mail from my company commander.

Not much to say about this place. It is just a transit base for troops going to and from Afghanistan.

For me, it was a 30-hour blur of heat and jet lag. There is a strict no-pictures rule on the base, which is a shame - there is a small, simple but quite moving monument to our dead which I would have wanted to record.

We mustered at 5 a.m. this morning to place our gear on pallets (no carry-on!) then we headed to the airfield to draw weapons and protective equipment.

I was issued a pistol and a rifle as well as a helmet and a flak jacket (which we call a frag vest, because it protects us from bomb fragments, aka shrapnel).

Speaking of the gear, it is exceptionally good. This is not to say our army, while spending a lot of money on good equipment, does not do its best to be frugal. I have gear that, going by the names written on various pieces, has previously been issued to several other soldiers.

We then waited ... and waited ... and waited ... for the aircraft to be ready.

After two hours spent in the ever-increasing heat, we were loaded onto a C-130 Hercules for the trip to Kandahar Airfield (KAF), the main Canadian base in Afghanistan. After 30 minutes, we were unloaded as the Herc had some mechanical malfunction. After another hour on the now-stifling tarmac, we were loaded onto another Herc, which managed to get itself into the air.

Arrival in Kandahar is interesting. The terminal building is called TLS, for "Taliban Last Stand." It still shows all the damage it suffered when the Americans took it in 2001. It doesn't serve as a building per se, as the structure has never been restored. The name is so evocative that it has persisted through the years.

The heat and dust, even now in mid-November, hit you hard. Fortunately, the hospital had arranged for a vehicle to come by and collect me. They took me straight to my quarters to drop my gear off.

The hard shacks we live in have sheet metal walls and a concrete floor. I have a two-by-three-metre space (almost) in a room I share with three other health care types (a doc and two male nurses).

The bed is comfy and the temperature is well-controlled, thanks to an air-conditioner that sounds like a cement mixer. Good thing I brought superior earplugs - sleeping here will be a challenge.

I then reported to the hospital, which I will describe in more detail tomorrow.

The food here is excellent. We eat in a large "DFac" (army-talk for "dining facility") that is run by a civilian contractor. It looks like any other large institutional cafeteria, so I am right at home. The only difference is that everyone who eats here is armed - you can't get in unless you are carrying a weapon.

The main risk at KAF comes from rocket attacks. The Taliban were kind enough to organize one to celebrate my arrival. It hit as we were eating supper and we had to go into shelters that are beside every building on the base. KAF, however, is gigantic. I heard the explosion, but it was so far away I had trouble telling exactly which direction the sound had come from. I noted that no one moved towards the shelters at more than a normal walk. OK, maybe a tad faster than that.

Nov. 15:

First day at work

First day at work ... sort of. I am finding it surprisingly difficult to adjust to the time change. I wake up at 1 a.m. every night and don't start to feel tired until 6 a.m., so I went through the day in a bit of a daze. Be that as it may, here are the salient facts of working here.

The outfit I work for is officially called the Multinational Medical Unit, or MMU. This is a Canadian-led surgical hospital. There is a trauma area where the real action happens.

The other part is a walk-in clinic affair that tends to the everyday needs of the Kandahar Airfield population. It can hold people overnight if they need minor stuff like intravenous rehydration.

As a general duty medical officer, I will spend 12 hours on duty in the clinic part seeing the small stuff, and walk the 20 metres to the trauma bays if anything serious comes in.

I will be assisted by medics who do all the initial screening, take the history and perform a physical exam. We are located right beside the airfield, so the medevac choppers can land about 50 metres away.

There is a "Role 1" facility a few hundred metres away, which would be the equivalent of a general practice office. They also do the long-term follow-up of wounded soldiers who remain in the theatre of operations.

The MMU is a 20-minute walk from my shack. Apparently, there is a bus that makes the rounds of the place, but its schedule is unknown to anyone I spoke to, so everyone walks. One of my roommates, who has been here for months, has acquired a bicycle - smart. Right across the street from my shack is the American gym. Although housed in a rough kind of Quonset hut, it is very well equipped with all kinds of exercise machines and weightlifting gear.

A block away from the gym is Old Canada House. This is the Canadian social club of my part of the base. It has a bunch of books, a large-screen TV and a patio. There are also Internet connections and phones. We are issued cards good for a limited number of minutes on each per week. There is also a New Canada House, which is bigger but has much the same amenities. It is clear on the other side of the base from my shack, however, so I have not had time to go there yet.

The social hub of the base is the boardwalk, a square of covered boardwalk which has stores and restaurants on two sides, though by restaurant, I mean a place that makes food and sell it out a walk-by window. Be that as it may, you can get a Pizza Hut pizza, a Burger King burger and a Tim Hortons coffee here. You can also buy rugs and all manner of local crafts.

The centre of the boardwalk serves as a sports area. There is a ball hockey rink for the Canadians and an area where the Brits and Americans can each play their version of football. Apparently there is also a larger bazaar somewhere, but it only operates once a week.

Life here looks fairly good. Living conditions are far from miserable, the work should be interesting and challenging and the team members I am with are fun characters. All in all, not a bad way to serve your country.

Nov. 16:

Getting into the groove

Not a bad day. Did my 12 hours, then hung around as we got word that some Afghan National Army troopers were coming in with shrapnel wounds from a rocket propelled grenade.

I got all revved up for my first combat-related cases but the event proved to be both frustrating and anticlimactic. The only seriously wounded casualty unfortunately died in the medevac chopper.

It was difficult to hear the medic describe his deterioration without being able to do anything about it. This death, like most non-instantaneous deaths in this war, was due to blood loss. This trooper could have been saved had we got to him an hour, or maybe even 30 minutes earlier.